Guests were treated to music played by the local band, Happy Days, as well as performances by the St. James Italian Dancers.

Festival organizer Tom Franco said he was glad to see the event come to fruition at Chautauqua Institution. The festival has not been held for the past two summers due to COVID-19. The pop-up event was a pared-down version but featured favorites such as Italian sausage, meatball subs, Spring Veggie Frittata and pizzelle.

Franco said he wasn’t certain about doing the event to begin with.

“When we were first asked to come to Chautauqua’s Culinary Week and bring the St. James Festival, I said no,” he said. “But then thinking about it, (I thought) what greater venue is there for the Catholic Church in Jamestown, St. James and the Italian Dancers bring their heritage of food, dance and love for the Lord? The whole thing is — we have nothing but peasant food here. Stuff our ancestors brought here.”

Franco said it was a great opportunity to share the Italian culture with the institution.

“We’re honored Vanessa Weinert, who was in charge of this little program for the culinary week, invited us,” he said. “We are so glad to be here.”

A new treat was available for purchase at the pop-up: Cake-Ollis, a cross between a cake pop and a cannoli.

Jodi Labardo, a volunteer with the St. James Italian Festival, said Tom Franco came up with the idea for CakeOllis, mini-cannoli shells filled with a cake pop filling. Labardo said it would have been difficult to include traditional cannoli for the festival due to the hot weather.

“We decided to do this because a traditional cannoli is filled with ricotta cheese and mascarpone, and it doesn’t hold up well in the heat — the shells get real mushy,” Labardo said. “This one is a vanilla cake I made from scratch and you crumbled it after it cools down to crumbs. Then I made a vanilla buttercream frosting, and for one cake you use about three-quarters of a cup of frosting. You mix it all up and it makes this filling. This one has maraschino cherries in it because it’s kind of a traditional Italian cannoli (flavor), and it has little chocolate chips on the bottom. You could do any flavor, though.”

Labardo said she has been involved with the festival for the past few years. However, due to COVID, the event could not be held last year.

“People really needed to get back involved, especially with our church,” she said. “It’s a really good thing for people to see our heritage. The Italian Dancers are very important to us, and we enjoy doing that. This brings people out, and it’s fun.”

She said it isn’t set in stone that a festival pop-up will be held at Chautauqua again, but would like to see both the full festival and the pop-up continue.

“I think it would be really nice to do both,” Labardo said. “I think this is a really nice thing, it’s a different group of people than we might get in town. We’ll see how we make out from this, and we will maybe decide to do both.”

She expressed gratitude for everyone involved, including those who make the trek to Chautauqua to experience the event.

“I would like to thank everybody who came out,” Labardo said. “Maybe a lot of people are residents, but a lot of people might have traveled down here to enjoy all of this, and I appreciate that.”

This year, Chautauqua is featuring free five-hour destination passes that allow visitors to visit local establishments, such as restaurants, stores, spas, galleries, Chautauqua Cinema or other on-grounds businesses.

The culinary week continues through Aug. 27 with various other vendors and events. For more information, view the schedule of events and vendors at culinaryweek.chq.org.